Is It a Lack of Motivation Or…? Part 1 of 4
The question I get asked most by parents and educators is: how do I motivate unmotivated students? It seems as if motivation is everyone’s bugaboo!
I get it. Working with students who seem stubborn, unwilling, and disengaged doesn't feel good. As an educator, when I encounter a student who seems tuned out, I notice myself feeling panicked, frustrated, and sometimes even angry.
When I stopped teaching in the classroom and started working as an academic coach, I swore I would never work with another person who didn’t want to work with me because I wanted to save myself from these feelings of desperation that would overcome me when I encountered students who were so shut down.
It can be easy, as an educator, to even judge students for their lack of motivation. “She’s lazy” or “he has such a bad attitude” are statements I’ve heard over and over again in my 20+ years as an educator.
Students themselves will often tell me, “I don’t know why I’m so unmotivated” or “I feel so lazy, but I just can’t get myself to do the things I need to do.”
The bad news here––and the reason why I often sigh a huge sigh whenever a teacher asks me about “motivating the unmotivated”–– is that the topic is complex.
Sometimes I think the word “motivation” itself is unhelpful, because it feels like we’re talking about something important and specific when actually we’re not.
In my years working intimately with students as an academic coach, I’ve learned that actually what seems like a lack of motivation is often something different altogether. The more granular and specific we can get about what is happening for the student, the more easily we can get into action around it. In fact, I’ve noticed “lack of motivation” often masks eleven different challenges a student could be facing instead.
In this four-part series, I’ll be unpacking those challenges one at a time. I hope to provide educators––whether you’re a classroom teacher, coach, tutor, counselor, or concerned parent––a map for how to collaborate with students to help them identify what is really going on.
In today’s post, we’ll focus on the first four challenges that I ALWAYS check out with any new student I’m working with. So often what students call “lack of motivation” and what teachers call “lazy” or “bad attitude” is one of these four things.
1. Is it a lack of motivation, or a BRAIN-BASED DIFFERENCE?
First up, there are often structural or chemical issues in a student’s brain that are masked as a “lack of motivation.” Educators would do well to ask themselves:
Does the student have…
a diagnosed or undiagnosed learning disability?
challenges with executive functioning?
anxiety or depression?
a history of trauma?
All of these challenges create structural barriers in the biomechanics of the brain that impact a student’s motivation. It’s highly likely that what seems like a “bad attitude” is a condition that the student cannot control.
2. Is it a lack of motivation, or does my student have the WRONG TOOLS?!
Recently I was coaching students at a local medical school. Most of the students are busy young adults from marginalized backgrounds who are “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” to make a better life for themselves and their families.
On more than one occasion, the students came to our coaching session so down on themselves! “I just don’t know why I can’t get myself motivated to do the work in this class,” they would tell me. I learned quickly that one reason many of these students felt unmotivated was that they didn’t even have the necessary textbooks in their class! Money was tight, and they had delayed getting the books they needed, hoping they could use the ones from the library or borrow from a friend.
It simply didn’t occur to them that not having the right tools created significant barriers to doing the work! All they thought was, “I can’t get motivated.”
If you are working with a student who seems unmotivated, check in with them to find out:
Do they have the tools they need to succeed?
Do they have the wrong tools?
Do they know how to use the tools they have?
Can they find the tools they need?
So often a student simply needs support acquiring the right tools, learning how to use them, and organizing them such that they can easily access what they need when they need it.
[And, if you want to make sure you have powerful, effective, proven tools to share with them, I teach educators a full toolkit of 40+ research-based tools inside the Anti-Boring Learning Lab…so you always have the right tool at the right time!]
3. Is it a lack of motivation, or is the TASK UNCLEAR?
Another thing that masks itself as a lack of motivation is an unclear understanding of the task at hand.
It took me many years of academic coaching before I realized that I should double-check a student’s understanding of the task at hand before I try to resolve the “motivation” issue.
Without fail, I learned that so many students who had trouble getting started with work had no idea what they were supposed to do! They hadn’t read the assignment sheet yet or hadn’t listened in class when the teacher explained. As soon as we read the instructions for the assignment, they suddenly became ready and raring to go!
Not always, of course. Sometimes reading the instructions would result in being overwhelmed if the task was too big. Or the student would perceive that the task would require more effort than it actually would..
There’s also the case of the perfectionist student who assumes they need to do more work than they have to do to “do a good job.” One of the coaches in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab discovered that a student who had gratefully received extended time on an assignment believed that he had to perform twice as well on said assignment, as a sign of gratitude. No wonder he procrastinated!
As a result, it’s always a good idea to double-check the following:
Has the student read the assignment?
Does the student understand the task?
Does the student misunderstand?
Is the task legitimately too big?
Does the student perceive the task will take more effort than it does?
Is the student being a perfectionist, over-assessing how much they need to do to meet the teacher’s expectations?
Usually, you’ll discover that getting more clarity about the task at hand often fixes the motivation problem.
4. Is it a lack of motivation, or is it a problem with the ENVIRONMENT?
Finally, I like to double-check the kind of environment in which the student is trying to work.
Many times a student’s work environment is littered with distractions. I’m often surprised that what feels like an obvious suggestion to me is not obvious to some students. For example, I have a YouTube video that suggests that students put their cell phones across the room (or outside of their room) when they are studying. A student commented recently about what a great suggestion that is, and how they never thought of it before!
There are at least three issues with a student’s study environment that I like to double check:
Are there too many distractions in their environment?
Is there a lack of structure?
Are they surrounded by dysregulating people and relationships?
Parents or teachers might not realize they are talking to students in ways that ruffle their feathers. But a student who is feeling angry or defensive because they’ve just been lectured to, for example, will not be very motivated to take the next action.
Similarly, a student who was used to a ton of structure when they were in high school, might think they’re unmotivated in college––but actually, they need help creating a structure for themselves that their parents provided when they were younger.
How to Use the Motivation Checklist
Whenever I’m starting work with a new student or troubleshooting a new issue with a student I’ve known for a while, I like to start by double-checking these four “low-hanging fruit” issues.
I ask myself, is it a lack of motivation or is it:
A brain-based difference?
An issue with resources and tools?
Lack of clarity about tasks? or
An unmotivating environment?
When a student appears to have trouble motivating themself, I encourage you to double-check whether any (or all!) of these challenges are at play.
You might even ask the students directly what they think! To that end, I’ve created a free tool you can use to deepen your conversations with students about motivation. Download the “The Motivation Checklist” in the learning library. Next time a student complains about being unmotivated, whip out the checklist and look at it with them! The hope is that you can fast-track figuring out what the actual issue is so that you can quickly move to brainstorm solutions.
Also, remember: this is the first in a series of four blog posts about the 11 challenges students might be facing instead of motivation! Come back next week to read the next one!
Any “aha!” moments for you in this video or post? Drop your noticings below! I’d love to hear what they are!